Integrated Supply Chain Team of the Year

This award was aimed at whole supply chain teams. It will be awarded to a team formed to tackle a major construction project or series of projects, or to a team that has worked together, along the supply chain for a specific product or company.

Winner

• Interserve Project Services

Mind-blowing. Cutting-edge. Spacious. Inviting. These are just some of the words that pupils and teachers used to describe the first school that opened under the Leeds Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme. These words are also the end result of an immense amount of work and colossal effort and dedication on the part of the team that translated the design for this 21st-century learning environment - and the rest of a £313m programme - into a reality. Comprising secondary schools for 6,000 pupil as well as leisure centres, this scheme was one of the largest BSF projects and yet was one of the first to reach financial close and start on site - and one of the quickest to complete. Nobody has any illusions about the complexity of delivering a project of this scale, and the fact that it was done so successfully is a credit to Interserve and a testament to its efforts to ensure collaborative working throughout the process, from signing the contract to building on site. This included appointing team leaders on a project-by-project basis and conducting workshops to value engineer the design. Furthermore, the transformational technology the team installed won it an Innovation in ICT award from Partnerships for Schools.

Runners-up

• Babcock Dyncorp

In 2005 Babcock won a £500m contract to improve and maintain the Ministry of Defence's estate of 46 bases in eastern England over seven years. Since then it has demonstrated the values of collaboration, flexibility and sustainability that are today accepted as vital to the success of a scheme. It has applied these principles to projects such as the installation of a voice and data duct system at RAF Wynton in Cambridgeshire and the conversion of a mental health facility at Chetwynd Barracks in Nottinghamshire into a relaxed and informal recovery centre for troops returning from frontline duties. The former was classed as an urgent operational requirement, and the area manager for Defence Estates said it was completed incident-free and ahead of schedule. He said: “The fact that there were no accidents or loss of service on a live site of this type while performing high-risk work of this nature is a remarkable effort. This success must be attributed to careful planning by the team.” The fact that the project was completed for £230,000 less than the budget must have been an added bonus.

• Skanska Construction

Skanska is nominated for its prison work. Working with its client, Serco, and its supply chain, it delivered 13 custodial projects worth more than £350m in total, and created more than 3,000 prison places. All these were built on time, cost effectively and safely and are now considered to be exemplary. Skanska admits that building up the team was not without its challenges and that early on there were some full and frank discussions, but working together through the issues meant it was a stronger team in the long run. It is now a high-performing supply chain that is fully integrated horizontally as well as vertically. A vital part of this was the early involvement of specialist contractors and suppliers to ensure that uncertainties were reduced and full ownership taken of each project. Of course, what really says the most about how successful the team was is the fact that Serco has rewarded Skanska with repeat work. Skanska, in turn, has handed this work to the same supply chain, thereby continuing the process. The team is currently working on two live projects, with another two tender submissions under consideration.